Kansas City Royals Owner Setting Team Up For Failure?
By Jason Burke
The Kansas City Royals are just one year removed from hoisting the World Series trophy, but the 2017 season is the last time that we will likely see many of the team’s core players on the same team, and owner David Glass does not want to spend in free agency this winter.
Sam Mellinger of the Kansas City Star wrote an excellent piece detailing the fact that Glass does not want to spend seemingly any money in free agency this offseason–and who could blame him? The market is one of the weakest in recent memory, so getting an upgrade would be costly and could only be marginal at best.
It looks as though the plan is to roll with the troops that have done this before and hope for a miracle. Kendrys Morales and Edinson Volquez have already been lost to free agency, and the Kansas City Royals lost their chance at a very Royals-esque signing when they didn’t jump on Josh Reddick due to the fact that the team would have had to offset his salary with a trade. He’s now playing for the competition in Houston.
The team has players that will hold trade value on the market and could free up some money to spend this winter, but those same players are needed in Kansas City if the Royals hope to remain competitive in 2017.
Wade Davis and Eric Hosmer each make the Royals go. Hosmer is projected to make $13.3M in 2017 while Jarrod Dyson ($2.5M projection), Danny Duffy ($8.2M) and Kelvin Herrera ($5.3M) are also arbitration eligible. All four are also in the final year of their contracts along with Lorenzo Cain, Jason Vargas, Mike Moustakas and Alcides Escobar.
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And therein lies the rub. There is no way that the club will be able to bring back all, or even half of these players with the money they are likely to command on the open market. Without supplementing the current roster with an upgrade or two, the Royals don’t have much margin for error if they hope to compete for a playoff spot in 2017 either.
If everything goes sideways or injuries pile up, then we should expect to see a number of those names listed above moved at the trade deadline next season. If they are competitive, then the Royals may have an outside chance at competing for one last World Series title with the current group, but then they could miss out on having a quicker turnaround, adding a number of valuable prospects to make for a quicker return to competitiveness.
With the new CBA, a few of the Royals pending free agents should land them at least a slew of third round picks in the 2019 draft, if the team decides to offer up a number of qualifying offers. While the promise of draft picks sounds nice, the draft in question is still a year and a half away. Add in a few years of development time to get a new core together, and it could be at least another 3-5 years before the Royals even sniff the playoffs again.
That’s why spending just a little bit more this winter would mean so much to the team and its fans. In 2017, winter is coming (to take all of your favorite players away to richer teams) but that doesn’t mean that the Royals should give up on summer just yet.
The first couple of months of the season will play a huge part in how the rest of the year shakes out for the club. If they’re in it, the team may stick together for the duration and see qualifying offers handed out next offseason. If a couple of players go down in April and put the club in a hole, Hosmer, Cain and Davis would make very attractive trade targets at the deadline, and the Royals would be foolish to pass up a good offer.
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The problem isn’t that an owner doesn’t want to spend more on this free agent class. Far from it. The problem is the specific set of circumstances that face the Kansas City Royals over the next year and their owner’s lack of wanting to make one last run with the group that brought him and his franchise out of the laughingstocks around Major League Baseball. The deck is stacked against the current club, but hey, there’s always 2022.